ふくふぐ – Happy Fugu

Well, I am alive. The fugu dinner was excellent and, given that none of the attendees died, could be considered an all-round success. It was actually a retirement party for Hamano-san, the lady who works in the Medical Office where May and I spend Friday afternoons 3-5pm. It is so sad that she is retiring; she is like a mother to everyone in the hospital, including all the surgeons who use the office as a break-room. It was an honour to be invited to her retirement dinner, it really was. I am going to miss her when she leaves at the end of December.

The meal consisted of fugu sashimi, then fried fugu, battered fugu, fugu soup and finally, fugu risotto. The window to the tiny little restaurant we were dining at doubled as an aquarium for the (live but soon-to-be-dead) fugu; by the time our party of six was done with all that food, I kid you not, the tank was half-empty. Given that each one of those fish contained enough poison to kill 15 fully grown men, I must commend our highly skilled chief separating the 'safe' parts from the 'deadly' ones. The battered fugu tasted remarkably like battered cod from the chippies back in England, so that obviously had to be my favourite. We fried the pre-sliced chunks of fish on little grills in the centre of the table, which wasn't anything special in itself but what was endlessly entertaining, the pieces of fish were doing that post-mortem death-twitching thing. They kept twitching for about five minutes too. I thought it would last only a few seconds after death but apparently not. They were really strong muscle contractions too.... amazing.

Here's my plate of sashimi. The sashimi is the pale pieces of meat laid out to cover the plate; the white and grey pieces in the middle are some of the fish's skin. Yum. And yes, my lips did go quite numb after just a few pieces. Way to go, chef!


*

I got my new work schedule last week. Monday and Tuesday are the same as before, but here are the changes:

Wednesday
am. Day Nursery
pm. Free time

Thursday
am. Pharmacy
pm. Nurses Station

Friday
am. Nurses Station
pm. 13:00-15:00 Operation Room
15:00-17:00 Medical Office

Also, starting in January after my Japanese classes finish at the Brick Hall, we won't get free time on Wednesday afternoons but we will spend 13:00-15:00 in the Nutrition Section and 15:00-17:00 back in Radiology. Overall, these changes are pretty pleasing, although I don't know yet what May and I will be doing in the new departments. I'll let you know.